Straight Hating

When does base-juicing bile from McCain/Palin veer into hate speech, riot incitement?

It's something we touched on in the episode of HUST FM below (and mixied it up with a certain Statesman columnist over), but it's positively exploded across the blogosphere in in the last few days: the unhinged hate emerging from the McCain/Palin rallies. We all know what Godwin's Law has to say on the subject, but a certain uncomfortable comparison is fast becoming inevitable, especially when a major party candidate is squarely laying the blame for all their supporters problems at the feet of an alien other. There's been plenty of disgusting, us-versus-them identity politics in Republican campaigns before – shit, it's practically all their campaigns are run-on – but the degree of bile emerging from these rallies ("Traitor! Terrorist! Kill him!") is truly jaw dropping.